It was not a long argument. It was over so soon. We were walking in circles around downtown. Each clutching madly at a sign. My hands were sore and my throat was worn from all the terse arguing. I felt relieved, in a way. She said something about her memory, and how it always left her at times like these. She said she wanted to go back to a place before this, before she knew about what it was like. When she was pure.

Yeah, I said I think the past is, well, I am not sure really. She stumbled a little with her words and I was positive we were both going to drown from the rain and all the tears. I suppose I will go now.

For what seemd like a long time I followed her home from across the street, partly because I knew that was where I would be seen, and as she got to the front stoop she turned around and held her step. She had her arms crossed but her features shivered in the gathering cold. I was sure at any minute it was going to knock her over.

I planted my feet to the dirty snow and thought about that first summer when we were both so awake and still so new and everything I said made her think of something she wanted to say, and all the pauses were just right and I would fall asleep in the afternoon sun and not wake up until dinner and we would go to bed early and think about how much there was for us to talk about, and just be quiet, and she would leave for work and I would barbacue hot dogs and swim in the red water and baptize myself over and over again, to take away all that I could not remember, and all that I could not forget.

She was there with me, and I was happy she was not alone in that cottage with the big wood stove in the middle. And neither of us had money but she would bring me home things, and I would make things, and we would let the water do all those things I could not, and still can't, and let the sun and the moon shine on us for awhile before I would leave to go to town and always she would cry and I would have to hold her and think to myself, man you should not can not hurt this girl, and I would squeeze her body and touch her face and feel for its memories and I would think about all that I had lost and was losing and hold on and squeeze ever tightly and hope that she would just understand that when I said forever, I meant that in a certain way. In my way.

Kent Bruyneel sleeps when you are mostly awake; and moves slowly about you. Circling.